An objective of a machine to machine (M2M) communication technology is to enable all terminals to have networking and communication capabilities.
The M2M communication technology is integration of a wireless communication technology and an information technology, and may be used for bidirectional communication, for example, information collection over a long distance, parameter setting over a long distance, and instruction sending over a long distance. Therefore, the M2M technology has different application scenarios, such as applications of safety monitoring, automatic selling, and goods tracking.
For remote monitoring services such as an intelligent meter reading service, an intelligent monitoring service for mountain and aquatic environments, and other remote communication services, a great number of wireless terminals are generally required to perform periodic measurement and data reporting, and features of the services of this type can be summarized as follows:
1. the number of terminals is large, and as many as 30000 terminals may exist in a cell;
2. the data volume is small and fixed, for example, the data volume that needs to be transmitted in the intelligent meter reading service is generally smaller than 50 Bytes, and the data volume that needs to be transmitted each time is nearly the same; and
3. the periodicity of a service is obvious.
It is a problem confronting and to be urgently solved by a great many devices on how to improve the data transmission efficiency and better use a current communication network.
In communication architecture of the M2M communication technology, a communication network provides communication between a machine type communication (MTC) application server and an MTC terminal, where the MTC terminal provides data or information for the MTC application server through the communication network, and the MTC application server sends data or an instruction to the MTC terminal through the communication network. The MTC application server stores the data or information of the MTC terminal, and/or stores data or information that is relevant to an MTC terminal group, for providing an MTC service or relevant information. The communication network includes, but is not limited to, a 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) network (such as a GSM or a UMTS or an SAE system), or may be another non-3GPP network (such as a WiMAX network).
The design of an existing communication network is adapted to H2H communication, and in the M2M communication technology, a communication network adapted to H2H communication is also used to transmit data. In an uplink data transmission process in the M2M communication, multiple interactions exist between an H2H terminal and a network side, where the interactions include: processes of radio resource control (RRC) connection establishment, security mode establishment, data upload, RRC connection release, and so on. Because of the complicated transmission process and a small data volume in the M2M communication, the air interface transmission efficiency is low, for example, an uploaded data volume in the M2M communication is 50 Bytes, and the overall signaling overhead in an entire data upload process is about 258 Bytes, so that the air interface transmission efficiency is 19.3%. Especially, a great many terminals exist in the M2M communication; therefore, the air interface transmission efficiency of the entire communication network is low.